franchise) from East to West. None of this would be so bad if The Grudge 2 delivered a modicum of scares. But the latest outbreak of this viral franchise is highly containable.
(Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 20 Oct.
ACTION/ADVENTURE THE GUARDIAN (12A) 138min u
The elite rescue swimmers of the US Coast Guard were the only administrative body to surface from the debacle that was ‘the response' to Hurricane Katrina with any credit. As a reward they've been given the Hollywood badge of honour — a film dedicated to their heroism. They might, though, not be so happy that the concoction is a second-rate hybrid of Top Gun. An Officer and a Gentleman and Full Metal Jacket.
Ben (Kevin Costner) loses all his colleagues in a badly edited rescue attempt, his wife ditches him, and to top it off he's ordered to teach at the Coast Guard 's elite training school. Here young Jake (Ashton Kutcher) enters the fray playing a cocky cadet who breaks hearts as easily as he does swimming records. it's actually this section of the film that is the most enjoyable with the stern master and rebellious pupil playing well off each other. Predictably, however. director Andrew The Fugitive Davies and writer Ron L Brinkerhoff (whose sole previous screenwriting credit is for Stallone vehicle D-Tox) sends them on a post graduation rescue mission that is as tiresome as it is drawn out. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 20 Oct.
DRAM-ROM-COM THE LAST KISS (15) 104min 00
‘1 “- --
This reworking of the 2001 Italian film L’Ultimo Bacio. scripted by Paul Haggis hot from his back-to-back Oscar wins for Million Dollar Baby and Crash. is a smug dram-rom-com that isn't nearly as smart. original or true to life as its makers would evidently like to think it is. Baby-faced Scrubs star Zach Braff plays a young professional who. upon turning 30. and facing the prospect of becoming a parent. deals with the immediate onset of an early- mid-life crisis by having a fling with a gorgeous and dim young co-ed. Thereafter, this portentously titled film follows a much beaten path. during
which the male protagonist must flagellate himself before achieving — yawn! — forgiveness and — snore! — redemption. Even The Last Kiss' conceit — that generation x-cum-y's mid-life crises come a decade earlier than those of their parents — fails to raise an eyebrow or lift a heavy lid. (Miles Fielder)
DRAMA STRAY DOGS (12A) 99min 0”
Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five in the Afternoon can legitimately claim to have directly inspired two other films. Firstly, there was her sister Hana's shrewd behind-the-scenes portrait Joy of Madness, and now her stepmother Marziyeh Meshkini's Stray Dogs, which was inspired by the latter witnessing the plight of Kabul's street children. Gol-Ghotai and Zahed (both played by non-professional actors). are a pair of pint-sized siblings. forced to roam the streets of the Afghan capital because both their parents are in prison. Their mother (Agheleh Rezaie) is facing the death penalty for adultery; after her first husband had disappeared for five years, she assumed he had been killed and remarried to feed her children. Across town. the Americans have incarcerated their father for his Taliban allegiances. Desperate to join their mother. Gol- Ghotai and Zahed hatch a plan.
Paying open homage to De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. Stray Dogs has a powerful immediacy thanks to its striking images of a devastated city. Meshkini has a strong eye for telling details. such as the gravediggers burning the frozen soil before digging graves or the VW Beetle car, marooned in a stretch of wasteland. containing a television playing footage of the 9/1 1 attacks. However, there’s an awkwardness to some of the dialogue exchanges. and the film does err towards sentimentality in its focus on the dog. whom the youngsters rescue from a baying mob.
(Tom Dawson) I Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 20— Tue 24 Oct only.
COMlNG OF AGE DRAMA AVOC
(18) 85min .0
Seemingly developed around Chomsky's theory that “unlimited economic growth has the marvellous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege'. Havoc is a film awash with promising ideas which its filmmakers proceed to then piss away. Set in the wealthy suburbs of Los Angeles where discontented rich girls Allison (Anne Hathaway) and Emily (Bijou Phillips) play pretend ‘hip hop gangstas' with their equally delusional white High School friends. After a drug
l l
scoring trip to a Latino area in East LA. Allison and Emily decide to embrace the real thing but the results of their assimilation are not quite what they expect
Scripted. surprisingly by Stephen Gagham (Traffic. Syriana) this is horribly cringey stuff. Admittedly. the brief is a difficult one — to make likeable about a bunch of privileged kids who can only identify with an underclass they have never met — but it is a theme that has been more cogently if equally ineptly dealt with in James Toback's Black and White. Stylistically TV director Barbara Kopple grapples with influences as diverse as the overrated Oscar winner Crash and Jonathan Kaplan's excellent 1979 template setting teenage rebellion flick Over the Edge but it's all so pat. gauche and awkward. Hathaway has clearly chosen the wrong film to make her adult cinema debut (you get to see her knockers) and is that really the talented Mr Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin. Brick) playing a ‘wigga' in a sunhat? Shame on you brother. (Paul Dale) I Cineworld. Glasgow from Fri 27 Oct.
DRAMA ALL THE KING’S MEN (1 127min 00
Sean Penn steps into Broderick Crawford '3 Oscar winning shoes in a new adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's novel, which was inspired by the infamous Louisiana governor and Senator Huey ‘Kingfish' Long: a politician so mired in corruption and greed that his reflection can be seen in certain modern previous senators from the more southerly parts of the US. In the 1949 Robert Rossen (The Hustler, Body and Soul) version. Crawford put in a mesmerising turn as the well intentionedstalking-horse turned politico. In screenwriter and director Steve Zaillian's remake. Penn, by contrast, is on lam Sam form. failing to give Stark enough charisma to convince as a vote-winning stalwart. Thus. the transformation of Stark hardly registers.
Aesthetically the film is all cold colours and smoky backdrops giving every exchange a laden pathos. The movie's only point of future interest may well be that it was one of the last movies shot in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 27 Oct.
Film
ALSO RELEASED 9
Shut Up! (Tats Toi!) (12A) 87min 0 Written and directed by farceur Jean Veber (Le Diner de Cons. Le Placard). this mediocre mismatched couple comedy pairs Gerard Depardieu‘s idiotic and garrulous robber with Jean Reno's calculating career criminal. Plenty of tedious car chases. predictable gags involving whoopee Cushions and cross- dressing. and a belated love interest in the form of an Albanian immigrant (played by Chilean actress Leonor Varela). lt manages to be unfunny and sentimental. GFI'. Glasgow from Fri 20- Thu 26 Oct only
Barnyard (PG) 89min
.0 Computer-generated animation feature centred on the single unfunny premise that farmyard animals do mad things when no one is watching. They talk. walk upright. buy human contraband from a ‘gray market' run by the gophers, and even turn the barn into a nightclub. If only it ended there. unfortunately there is a party crazy cow. Otis (voiced by Kevin James). who needs to be taught about responsibility. With voice over work from Sam Neill. Courtney Cox and Danny Glover and songs by Tom Petty and Peter Gabriel. this should be half decent. but it's actually very poor. More manure for minors. General release from Fri 20 Oct.
Saw III (18) 130mm 000 Third time ar0und for this interesting horror franchise and evil mastermind Jigsaw has disappeared. While detectives try to locate him and his new apprentice Amanda (Shawnee Smith), Dr Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) is unaware that she is about to become the latest pawn on his vicious chessboard. Directed again by Darren Lynn Bousman who made Saw II and written by series originators James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Saw III is an improvement on it‘s predecessor while nicely squaring the circle on this nastily intense and disturbing series. A small treat for Halloween. General release from Fri 27 Oct. Step Up (PG) 103min
0 Dirty Dancing meets Fame in this tale of sullen young thug Tyler (Channing Tatum) who winds up doing community service at the Baltimore High School for the Performing Arts. And don't you just know it — he goes from mopping the floors to dance partnering Nora (Jenna Dewan). a talented choreographer in a big dance championship. This hokey. formulaic romantic drama is every bit as appalling as it sounds. General release from Fri 27 Oct.
19 Oct-2 Nov THE LIST 41